Fintelegram APP learned that the British Prime Minister's Office announced on Wednesday local time that the alternative asset management giant Blackstone Group (BX.US) from the United States confirmed an investment of up to £10 billion (approximately $13.35 billion) to build an artificial intelligence datacenter in northeast England. This plan is part of Blackstone Group's grand AI vision. Earlier, Blackstone had announced a deal to acquire the Australian data center group AirTrunk for over $24 billion Australian dollars, making it Blackstone's largest investment in the Asia-Pacific region this year.

With the emergence of consumer-centered generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini, it may drive a prosperous era of AI development that surpasses a decade. The alternative asset management giant is striving to firmly grasp the enormous profits brought by AI core infrastructure - data centers in the AI era.

Blackstone Group's investment of over $13 billion in building an AI datacenter in the United Kingdom is not just a simple AI infrastructure construction, but also an important strategic step for Blackstone to strive for a leading position in the global AI infrastructure market. With AI technologies, especially the widespread use of large-scale AI models and AI applications like ChatGPT, AI data centers have become the most core facilities for efficient processing and storage of massive data. Undoubtedly, Blackstone Group sees the huge revenue potential in this field.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer stated in an interview during his visit to New York that Blackstone's massive investment in the UK is expected to create up to 4000 jobs, including 1200 positions specifically for the site construction in Northumberland. Construction is expected to commence officially next year.

"The UK is Blackstone Group's preferred investment market because it possesses a strong talent and innovation asset mix, as well as a highly transparent legal system." Jon Gray, President and Chief Operating Officer of Blackstone Group, confirmed this report.

Last year, a UK startup Britishvolt went bankrupt, leading to the shelving of the plan to build an artificial intelligence datacenter. However, the UK government still strongly supports domestic and international companies to jointly participate in building AI data centers, aiming to promote the UK's advantage in artificial intelligence infrastructure and innovation in the AI era.

"The local community of Bryce suffered losses due to the bankruptcy of Britishvolt, but will also directly benefit from this investment. Blackstone Group confirmed a 0.11 billion British Pound investment in a fund to support further AI-related skills training in the area and the construction of transportation infrastructure to support the local economic development," stated the UK Prime Minister's Office.

In 2023, ChatGPT became popular globally, and in 2024, the release of the Sora video model in the AI field, along with Nvidia's unparalleled performance in multiple quarters as the “shovel seller” in the AI field, may signify that human society will gradually step into the AI era starting in 2024. Large AI data centers can be described as the most core large-scale infrastructure projects in the AI era, crucial for the efficient operation and continuous updates of generative AI applications like ChatGPT.

Some of the most important global cloud service providers who lead in AI technology, such as AWS under Amazon, Google Cloud Platform, and Microsoft Azure Cloud Platform, are accelerating investment in building large data centers in North America to meet the increasing demand for cloud AI training/inference capabilities from their cloud computing customers. This is also the core logic behind the nearly 75% surge in the stock price of Digital Realty, one of the largest data center REITs in North America since 2023.

Global renowned strategic consulting company Bain predicts that as artificial intelligence (AI) technology rapidly disrupts enterprises and economies, the market size of all AI-related markets is expanding, reaching 990 billion US dollars by 2027. In its fifth annual Global Technology Report released on Wednesday, the consulting company indicated that the overall market, including AI-related services and foundational hardware, will grow at a rate of 40% to 55% per year from last year's base of 185 billion US dollars, translating to revenues of 780 billion to 990 billion US dollars by 2027.